SASKATCHEWAN
Murray Mandryk: Moe should listen to doctors' pleas for pay changes

Opinion by Murray Mandryk • Wednesday

The Saskatchewan Party government is hoping their doctor recruitment will be enough to ward off angry rural protests over health service reductions like the one Rural and Remote Minister Everett Hindley and Canora-Pelly MLA Terry Dennis faced this summer.

One thing out this Saskatchewan Party government is that it likes things pretty much as they are.

For all its sabre-rattling over constitutional change and Saskatchewan being a nation within a nation, the hallmark for Premier Scott Moe has really been about keeping things as they are.

This seems to work rather well in a place where the voters that stay here don’t seem to want much change, either.

The problem, however, is maintaining things as they are in Saskatchewan has never been easy. This remains a province with a declining rural population and isolated urban centres that make it difficult to attract amenities … or even the people we need to keep us healthy and safe.

Consider Saskatchewan’s perpetual problem of family physician recruitment where critics have been quick to argue that government answers adhere to the long-standing definition of insanity: Doing the same thing over and over again and hoping for different results.

Of course, after a long, hot summer of rural health-care protests in places like Kamsack over the closures of emergency, lab and X-ray departments and other services, the Sask. Party government now eagerly argues its strategy is working and those closures are now a thing of the past.

In question period Monday, Moe recited a list of rural communities that have had health services restored after major disruptions this summer while Health Minister Paul Merriman called the government’s four-stage recruitment plan “the most aggressive in the country.”

By now you’re likely sensing the government’s synchronized messaging.

“The difference is that Saskatchewan has an aggressive four-point action plan: Recruit, train, incentivize and retain over 1,000 health-care workers in communities across the province including Kamsack,” Canora-Pelly MLA Terry Dennis — one of many government members who had to deal with the anger this summer — told the assembly Monday.

Notwithstanding criticism from the the NDP Opposition — or, better put, in defiance of it — there is no doubt the government has earmarked substantial tax dollars to address the recruitment and retention problem and to get services restored. The demand to do so in rural communities would have been hard to ignore.

But the reality is that we continue to put plugs and patches in a health system that instead needs innovative redesign to retain people. It’s all a tad insane.

At a time when even doctors are clamouring for a major departure from the fee-for-service remuneration model, the government seems content to instead throw money at recruitment in a manner that, so far, is mostly indistinguishable from how we’ve always done things.

The self-assured response from the government came during question period in which NDP health critic Vicki Mowat encouraged the government to consider a call by the Saskatchewan College of Family Physicians for the option of a new payment model similar to what B.C. is adopting next year.

“Our health-care system was already feeling the impact of a family doctor shortage before the pandemic,” SCFP president Dr. Andries Muller wrote in a letter sent to Mowat earlier this month. “This problem will become a crisis as more doctors retire and fewer medical school graduates enter this profession.”

Muller noted the option that will soon be available for B.C. family physicians better “recognizes that family physicians’ work includes significant time outside patient encounters” and pleaded for Saskatchewan to “move with urgency to also transform our outdated payment model to retain our family physicians.”

“The new payment model in British Columbia will be very attractive to family medicine graduates, as well as to new Canadian physicians looking to start their careers in Canada,” Muller chillingly noted.

The government didn’t outright reject the suggestion from the SCFP and is awaiting more doctors’ input before moving forward. Merriman also mentioned other innovative strategies like better utilization of nurse practitioners.

But nothing from the government on Monday suggested it is eagerly considering a radical overhaul or even minor innovation in doctors’ pay.

Keeping things as they are seems the Sask. Party way.

Mandryk is the political columnist for the Regina Leader-Post and the Saskatoon StarPhoenix.

Published Nov. 16, 2022.